International Journal of Care and Caring • vol 4 • no 1 • 43–58 • © Policy Press 2020

Print ISSN 2397-8821 • Online ISSN 2397-883X • https://doi.org/10.1332/239788219X15677826133237

Accepted for publication 06 September 2019 • First published online 04 October 2019

SPECIAL ISSUE • Care ethics thinks the political

article
Re-conceptualising the political subject: the
importance of age for care theory
Monique Lanoix, mlanoix@ustpaul.ca
Saint Paul University, Canada

Many gerontologists argue that citizenship should be re-conceptualised in order to include

entitlements to care for persons with dementia. I agree with their claim; however, I put forward
that what is needed is a re-conceptualisation of the citizen. Specifically, I argue that care theory
must explicitly divest itself from an understanding of the citizen as an adult. My proposal is for
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a naturalised concept of the citizen, which means that it would be based on the reality of actual
human beings. Citizens age, their abilities are diverse and these vary throughout their lifetimes.

Key words age • care ethics • citizen

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To cite this article: Lanoix, M. (2020) Re-conceptualising the political subject: the importance of
age for care theory, International Journal of Care and Caring, 4(1): 43–58,
DOI: 10.1332/239788219X15677826133237

Introduction
In her transformative book Love’s labor, Eva Kittay (1999) argued against excluding
persons with severe cognitive disabilities from considerations of justice. Her book led to
intense debates and discussion surrounding the challenges that persons with cognitive
disabilities pose to theories of justice. More recently, in Zoopolis, Sue Donaldson and
Will Kymlicka (2011) draw on the work of disability theorists, such as Anita Silvers
and Leslie Pickering Francis (2005, 2009), to construct a theory of citizenship that
includes domestic animals. Proposals to expand the public and political spheres to
include beings who appear to be unable to participate fully as self-determining
agents are not solely the domain of philosophers and political theorists. In their
discussions on dementia, ageing and access to services, sociologists and gerontologists
recognise the lack of access to services, as well as the absence of the voices of those
who have dementia in the public and political spheres (for example, Bartlett and
O’Conner, 2007; Birt et al, 2017; Grenier et al, 2017; Kontos et al, 2017). In order
to address this absence, as well as the precarity of individuals in the later stages of
life, these theorists propose putting forward different concepts of citizenship, such as
social or relational citizenship.
I agree that citizenship needs to be re-conceptualised. However, I wish to begin a
step earlier and examine the very concept of the citizen. Although I find Donaldson
and Kymlicka’s proposal to include non-human animals in a theory of citizenship

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worth considering, I will bracket non-human animals from my article at this point.
I do this in order to focus on my immediate goal, which is to challenge the implicit
view in many theories of citizenship (for example, that of Rawls) that the citizen is
a perpetual adult. I do this in order to draw attention to the need for care theory to
divest itself explicitly from an understanding of the citizen as an adult.
In the first part of the article, I revisit the way John Rawls arrives at his concept of
the political person. I contrast the Rawlsian subject with that of care theorists to show
how the individual implicit in some care theories differs in an important aspect that
has not been discussed extensively in the literature thus far. Second, after reviewing
the proposals put forward by gerontologists to rethink citizenship, I conclude that
such proposals do not necessarily guarantee that care needs will be addressed. Finally,
by examining the manner in which these different disciplinary streams intersect,
I propose a reformulation the concept of the citizen. Instead of grounding theories of
justice on an idealised concept of the citizen as an adult with unchanging capacities,
I argue for a naturalised concept of the citizen. Recognising that naturalising can
have various definitions, I take it to mean that a naturalised version of the citizen is
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one based on the reality of actual human beings: they age and change throughout
their lifetimes.

The citizen as a deontological and a teleological being

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The citizen as self-legislating

In this section, I examine the political subject in Rawls’s theory. I highlight the
essential traits of the Rawlsian subject in order to compare them to the subject of
care theorists in the next section.
Much has been written on the Rawlsian political subject, and another discussion of
this topic may appear superfluous at best. Communitarian critiques have questioned
the Rawlsian political subject’s lack of connectedness to their community (for example,
Sandel, 1982), and theorist Ruth Lister (2003) has shown that in accounts of citizenship,
the citizen is an implicit male breadwinner. Although I generally agree with these
criticisms, especially Lister’s, my focus is different as I bring in a new perspective. By
looking at the manner in which Rawls arrives at his concept of the political subject
or citizen, I show that the ideal of the citizen relies on an essential characteristic,
the capacity to self-legislate. As this capacity is foundational to conceptualising the
type of individual that can be considered a subject of justice and a full participant in
society, I call this type of citizen ‘deontological’ in order to emphasise the primary
feature of self-legislation.1 It may sound odd to portray individuals as deontological
beings as the adjective is usually applied to moral frameworks. However, I want to
underscore the essential qualities of political subjects by focusing attention on the way
in which they engage in the political sphere. It is crucial to highlight these features
in order to compare the Rawlsian citizen with the citizen of care theorists. As will
become evident later, I align myself more closely to Paul Ricoeur’s (2007) critique
of Rawls’s project.
In order to make the case that the political subject is deontological, I examine
the theoretical manoeuvres that take place in order to arrive at the concept: first,
the process of abstraction; and, second, the process of idealisation. It is crucial to
recognise that, at least initially, abstraction was instrumental in helping women and

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other minority groups make claims to citizenship. Anne Phillips (1993: 49) makes
the point that ‘every oppressed group has found a lifeline in the abstraction of the
individual and has appealed to these in making claims to equality’. The appeal to
sameness through the abstracting of contingent traits has had a positive social impact
as it has led to more egalitarian societies.There is also another purpose to abstraction,
and in his discussion of abstraction in Political liberalism, Rawls (1993: 45–6) writes:

[t]he work of abstraction, then, is not gratuitous: not abstraction for

abstraction’s sake. Rather, it is a way of continuing public discussion when
shared understandings of lesser generality have broken down.… Seen in
this context, formulating idealised, which is to say abstract, conceptions of
society and person connected with those fundamental ideas is essential to
finding a reasonable political conception of justice.

These theoretical devices are meant to obscure unwanted distractions and to put
agreement within reach. In Justice as fairness: A restatement, Rawls (2001: 8) clarifies
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further:

In using the conception of the citizen as free and equal persons we abstract
from various features of the social world and idealize in certain ways. This
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brings out one role of abstract conceptions: they are used to gain a clear
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and uncluttered view of a question seen as fundamental by focusing on the

more significant elements that we think are most relevant in determining
its most appropriate answer.

For Rawls, the significant traits that remain after the work of abstraction are the two
moral powers of citizens. These moral powers are characterised in a distinct manner
as ‘a capacity for a sense of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good. A
sense of justice is the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public
conception of justice which characterises the fair terms of social cooperation’ (Rawls,
1993: 19). Having a sense of justice in this context means that citizens ‘are capable
of having (and assumed to acquire) a sense of justice, a normally effective desire to
apply and act upon the principles of justice, at least to a certain minimum degree’
(Rawls, 1971: 505). It is essential to highlight at this point that Rawls acknowledges
that he makes a move from abstraction to idealisation. This idealisation introduces a
set of competencies that may be true of some adult individuals but certainly not of
all human beings, from infancy to old age. However, it is necessary as, for Rawls, a
citizen is a person who is conceptualised as ‘a normal and fully cooperating member of
society over a complete life’ (Rawls, 1993: 18, emphasis added). Therefore, the age of a
bona fide political subject is fixed at adulthood. If this idealisation is coherent with
his social contract framework, it should not be accepted uncritically.
Onora O’Neill has written extensively on the difference between abstraction
and idealisation, and the possible pernicious consequences of idealisation. As she
explains, ‘[a]bstraction, taken strictly, is unavoidable and in itself innocuous’ (O’Neill,
1989: 209). She notes that the objections that are raised against abstract principles
are, in fact, aimed at idealisations. For O’Neill (1996: 110, n 29), ‘[a]bstraction
brackets contentious predicates whereas models of man that impute idealized forms
of rationality and self-sufficiency do not bracket but predicate falsely. Whatever the

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theoretical advantages of idealizing models of man, practical reasoning that assumes

this sort of idealization relies on assumptions that are nearly always repudiated in
acting.’ In the case of contract theory, abstracting contingent particularities such as
gender can help ‘universalise’ the contractor to include men and women. However,
Rawls goes further than merely getting rid of contingent features as he posits that
political subjects are to possess specific characteristics that, even if general, assume
certain cognitive powers. As O’Neill (1989: 201) warns:

[a] theory simplifies if it either leaves things out (i.e., abstracts) or smooths out
variations. If it incorporates predicates that are not even approximately true
of the agents to whom the model is supposed to apply, it does not simplify. If
idealizations do not ‘simplify’ the descriptions that are true of actual agents,
then they are not innocuous ways of extending the scope of reasoning.

Following O’Neill, I claim that the characteristics posited by Rawls are ultimately
prejudicial. In fact, Rawls’s idealisation goes against his goal that society be viewed
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as a self-sufficient scheme that makes room within itself ‘for all the necessities and
activities of life, from birth to death’ (Rawls, 1993:18).This goal is impossible to attain
when citizens are presumed to be perpetually cooperating adults as there is no space
to include the necessities and activities of life that are relevant to other phases of life.
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This means that the Rawlsian political subjects – those who are able to deduce
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right conduct by applying the principles correctly – are individuals who will be
self-legislating and will follow certain principles or rules. I do not mean that the
political subject will uncritically follow rules, but rather that she is an individual whose
engagement in the political sphere will be through adhering to a set of accepted rules
and norms. The idealised Rawlsian political subject is a deontological being: she has
the capacities of an adult without cognitive impairments.2 Moreover, the political
subject is recognised as a bona fide political subject when she behaves in this manner;
as Rawls (1971: 510) states, ‘those who can give justice are owed justice’.
Paul Ricoeur (1992) is uncomfortable with Rawls’s theory of justice because it only
privileges procedural justice. It is not that Ricoeur objects to framing the political
subject as one concerned with rules and procedural justice. Rather, it is the fact that
the deontological dimension is the only one that is of import that Ricoeur objects
to. According to Ricoeur, the whole point of formulating principles of justice is to
arrive at a better political framework so that citizens can live well together. However,
this is never expressed explicitly in Rawls’s writings and Ricoeur deplores the absence
of a teleological dimension from Rawls’s theory of justice. My point in gesturing
to Ricoeur’s critique is to draw attention to the importance of the teleological
dimension, which will surface in some of the feminist critiques of Rawlsian justice.
In the next section, I make the case that feminists, such as Kittay, who have criticised
the Rawlsian political subject’s lack of attachments, also bring forward a teleological
perspective, albeit implicitly.

The citizen as caring

Kittay makes the case that individuals who have dependency concerns should be
taken into account within a theory of justice. The problem for a Rawlsian theory
would be to find a way to include such an individual within a theory of justice

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based on contract, and Kittay (1997, 1999, 2009) has argued that Rawls’s theory
cannot be inclusive of such individuals. I want to highlight at this point an essential
feature of the individual who has dependency concerns. That individual is certainly
a deontological being: she has to follow rules, such as treating the person that she is
taking care of with respect and making sure that her needs are met appropriately and
in concert with the care receiver. However, she is also someone who is involved in an
activity that is teleological.To explain: in a contract situation, the parties are involved
in ascertaining that the proper rules and norms are respected – it is an activity that is
primarily deontological. However, someone who is caring for another not only takes
into consideration the norms and rules that should be followed, but is also focused on
bringing the good for the person that she is caring for. As Joan Tronto (1993: 107–8,
phase four, care receiving) has explained, which Kittay is in agreement with, the good
of the person being cared for is determined along with the person who requires care.
It could be countered that Rawls posits individuals as having a sense of their good
and that they could be perceived as teleological beings because of this. That is, such
individuals would be concerned about a particular good and not simply rule following.
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However, this is a very thin sense of the good and it misinterprets Rawls’s intent;
the Rawlsian good that is in question is limited to an individual’s personal life, not
to the society in which she lives. Importantly, for care theorists, the good that they
are seeking is not only the personal project of the two people involved in the caring
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activity; good care also requires adequate social supports. The care relation is not
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simply a dyadic one, it is also a social one; this point has been part of Tronto’s project
from the start. The person involved in the care relation is a political subject who
is not only involved in thinking about her own personal good, but also advocating
for social institutions that are inclusive of the person for whom she is caring. The
arguments of Kittay and other care theorists go further in thinking about the good;
their goal is to change social arrangements.
It is important to stress that care theorists do not discuss their proposals in terms
of teleology. However, the case can be made that when Tronto (2013) calls for caring
democratic institutions, she is putting forward an argument that moving away from
‘only my own’ requires an outlook that encompasses all other individuals within
one’s community. It is in this larger sense that I propose to think of individuals with
dependency concerns as both deontological and teleological beings. This is the type
of reflection that Ricoeur discusses in ‘From the moral to the ethical and to ethics’.
Here, he suggests that a back-and-forth between a teleological perspective and a
deontological one is necessary as these two perspectives ‘belong to two distinct
planes of practical philosophy, but they overlap at some significant points’ (Ricoeur,
2007: 50). My point is that the individual with dependency considerations is not
strictly a deontological being, but one who can and must take both a teleological
perspective and a deontological one.
This may appear to bring care ethics close to virtue ethics, and the rapprochement
has been critically discussed in the literature (for example, Plot, 2005). However, this
is not what I am arguing.3 Rather, the person with dependency considerations is a
teleological being not in the Aristotelian sense that society is the place where she
becomes most human, but rather in the Ricoeurian sense of wanting to ‘live well,
with and for others and in just institutions’ (Ricoeur, 2007: 60, emphasis added). Care
theorists make dependency needs visible in the public sphere. As will be discussed
next, gerontologists also make the case that this move must take place if the care needs

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of persons living with dementia are to be met. It is in this sense that living well with
and for others should be understood.

Rethinking citizenship and naturalising the citizen

Social and relational citizenship

In his writings, Michael Ignatieff has long pondered the question of citizenship, and
in a lecture and subsequent article in the Queen’s Law Journal, he effectively captures
the myth of citizenship. For Ignatieff (1987: 400), there is a dichotomy between the
Aristotelian and modern view of citizenship:

[t]he myth of citizenship holds that political life is the means by which men
realize the human good. On the other hand, to the modern western political
tradition, inaugurated by Hobbes and Locke, citizenship has seemed a fanciful
conception of man and his political nature. Man in such a conception is a
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bundle of passions and interests which he satisfies chiefly in market relations

and private sociability.

Political theorists and philosophers have focused their attention on the goals of
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political society and the reasons why individuals would want to belong to it. However,
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gerontologists, for example, the ones discussed in this section, take the perspective
of research and dementia practice to put forward their thinking about personhood
and citizenship. With a view on praxis, they frame their discussion and conclusions
about personhood and citizenship in a quite different manner than philosophers and
political theorists.
When philosophers discuss persons who have cognitive disabilities, their discussion
usually centres on either one or two issues that are, in fact, related: personhood and
citizenship.The one I am interested in is that of citizenship but I will first discuss the
views on personhood as this discussion will put into context the various perspectives
on citizenship. Granted that personhood is a contested concept in the philosophical
literature (see, for example, McMahan, 2003; Kittay, 2009, 2010; Singer, 2010), the
discussion has revolved around the capabilities for reason and autonomous action.
Coming from a pragmatic perspective, gerontologists can take quite a different
approach. In fact, the gerontologists and sociologists discussed in this article readily
grant that persons with severe dementia retain personhood. This assertion is based
on the individual’s relationality to others and on a notion of the embodied self as
relational. Using the writings of Merleau-Ponty and explicitly granting the importance
of the self as embodied, Pia Kontos (2004) maintains that individuals who are no
longer verbal due to advanced stages of dementia, as in the case of Alzheimer’s disease,
nevertheless retain embodied agency. If they retain agency, they can be considered
to possess personhood. In this, these theorists align themselves with philosophers
such as Hilde Lindemann (2010: 162), who considers how families and close others
can and should hold the person with dementia in her identity. Kristin Zeller (2014)
uses the notion of ‘intercorporeal personhood’ to put forward the notion of holding
each other not only in identity, but also in personhood. Another example is that of
Bruce Jennings (2010), for whom personhood should be discussed in terms of
memorial personhood. Of significance in these writings on personhood is the

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recognition of the reality of bodied existence, as well as the fact that human beings
are nested in a web of relationships. Ultimately, for these theorists, personhood is
not a solo project.
Acknowledging that the field of dementia research has evolved, Ruth Bartlett and
Deborah O’Connor (2007) grant that the lens of personhood has been useful for
conceptualising dementia care and research. Citing research on the manner in which
persons with dementia are aware of their situation, these authors explain that ‘since
the introduction of personhood into the dementia literature, research and practice has
shifted from failing to even consider whether persons with dementia have anything to
say, to acknowledging that indeed they do and recognizing the importance of hearing
their perspectives’ (Bartlett and O’Connor, 2007: 109). However, they observe that
the concept of personhood has its limitations. For these authors, personhood is an
apolitical concept that fails to recognise a person with dementia as a social actor. In
order to redress what they see as a failing of the personhood model, they propose
a citizenship lens. In addition, because citizenship is about power, it is better suited
for fighting discrimination. Bartlett and O’Connor (2007: 111) note that citizenship
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has played an important role in critical disability studies, and they put forward that
a ‘citizenship lens clearly has the potential then to improve the status and treatment
of disempowered groups of people’.
In their 2010 book Broadening the dementia debate:Towards social citizenship, Bartlett
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and O’Connor, (2010) propose social citizenship as an inclusive model of citizenship.

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As they rightly recognise, ‘[t]he way citizenship is commonly perceived, as a status

with associated rights but also responsibilities, has a tendency to exclude those who
for whatever reason are unable to claim their rights or fulfil their obligations as
citizens’ (Bartlett and O’Connor, 2010: 31). In order to address the needs of persons
with dementia, they gesture to Ignatieff ’s notion of passive citizenship, where he
defines ‘active modes in terms of running for political office, voting and so forth,
and passive modes in terms of entitlement to rights and welfare’ (Bartlett and
O’Connor, 2010: 34). For Bartlett and O’Connor (2010: 37), social citizenship
is ‘a status, practice or relationship’ where a person with dementia is free from
discrimination and despair and has opportunities to grow (Bartlett, 2016: 457).
In the Rawlsian social contract model, persons with advanced dementia and those
who are severely cognitively impaired are situated outside the principles of justice.4
The recent literature in gerontology contests this view.These writers underscore the
importance of recognising the rights of individuals even as they advance to a great
old age. The social citizenship model has the advantage of locating the language of
citizenship beyond that of the citizen as a site of rights and duties as it stresses the
social aspect of being a citizen. Social citizenship is about being part of a community.
Bartlett and O’Connor (2010: 127) grant that the social model is complicated by the
fact and it appears to jettison a citizen’s responsibilities:

even here the fundamental issue of there being a conceptual link between
citizenship and responsibility remains unaddressed. One possible way around
this issue is to think in terms of the fluidity of responsibility – that is to say,
rather than seeing it as a hard and fixed set task (such as voting), see it in
degrees and in terms of shifting expectations. In practice, that would mean
inviting and expecting people to take on as much or as little responsibility
as they can handle. This is certainly an area that requires further discussion.

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De-emphasising the participatory side of citizenship is certainly a strength of the

social citizenship model. Even if promising, the social citizenship model risks casting
individuals with dementia as merely recipients of care.5
In order to explicitly acknowledge that persons with dementia can be and often are
active participants in their care, Pia Kontos et al (2017: 184) put forward the model
of relational citizenship:

[o]ur proposed relational citizenship model extends the concept of social

citizenship by presuming that support of the central tenets of relationship-
centred care (i.e. interdependence, reciprocity, and the support of persons
with dementia as active partners in their own care) and embodied selfhood
theory (i.e. the primordial body and socio-cultural dispositions as the primary
agential source of interactive and communicative practices for persons
living with dementia) are necessary to more inclusively grant citizenship
entitlements to persons living in long-term residential care.
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The proposal to think of citizenship in relational terms has two goals: first, it is a
corrective to the perception of people living with dementia as objects of care; and,
second, it underscores the potential for the agency of individuals with dementia and
acknowledges the relationships in which they are located.
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In his writings on ageing, Jan Baars (2012: 243–4) introduces a distinction between
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the contingent and existential limitations that come with ageing. In their chapter
‘Connecting meaning with social structure: theoretical foundations’, Baars and
Chris Phillipson (2013: 25) explain that contingent limitations are ‘those limitations
that are neither inherent in human life nor inevitable in senescing, such as poor housing
conditions, insufficient care, social isolation, starvation or ageism’. These limitations
could be addressed by better policies and by social transformations. Existential
limitations are those ‘limitations and vulnerabilities inherent in human life and that
will inevitably manifest as people live longer’ (Baars and Phillipson, 2013: 25). Such
limitations are inescapable as they are an integral component of the lived realities of
ageing bodies.6 For Baars (2012: 244), it is essential to consider both perspectives as
neither perspective on its own is sufficient to improving the quality of human ageing.
Proposals to reframe citizenship as either social or relational primarily target the
social and institutional barriers to older persons’ agency. By their very focus on
citizenship, these proposals endeavour to remove contingent limitations. However, if
care needs are to be made visible in the public sphere, reformulating citizenship will
not go far enough.The recognition of care needs implies an explicit acknowledgement
of the variability of human beings, that is, the recognition of the existential limitations
faced by all human beings.
Even if Baars and Phillipson are discussing ageing, I believe that the concepts of
existential and contingent limitations are applicable to my analysis of the citizen. If
existential limitations are more evident in the case of older persons, they are real
for all human beings. Furthermore, the notion of existential limitations points to
the fact that the capacities and abilities of all individuals will vary as they grow into
adulthood and age. I believe that this is of central importance as it will have an
impact on how communities organise housing, transportation and become more
age-friendly. For my purposes, recognising existential limitations will influence how
care needs are met. Although contingent and existential limitations are conceptually

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important distinctions, I do not think that they can be neatly separated in practice.
In this, I follow critical disability theorist Alison Kafer’s (2013) suggestion of a
political/relational model of disability as it does not unduly sunder impairment and
disability.As she explains,this model can‘pluralize the ways we understand bodily instability’
(Kafer, 2013: 7) and would lead to broader accessibility. Social arrangements that
recognise the plurality of care needs should take into account the various and
changing limitations of real bodies.Therefore, in order to make care central to political
theorising, it is necessary to acknowledge human variability. As I argue next, this
recognition entails rethinking the concept of the citizen.

Naturalising the citizen

In an earlier article, I made the case that it was possible to introduce age into a
concept of the citizen (Lanoix, 2007). The worry that I expressed at that time,
which is also a concern that is raised by the theorists I have been discussing, is that
‘the individual who is too young or has dementia is left out of the ideal of the citizen
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and this implies that the rights devolving from her citizenship are tenuous, at best’
(Lanoix, 2007: 120).The concerns that motivated that article are ones that I still have;
in the case of Rawlsian social contract theory, the idealised citizen who is putting
forward the principles of justice will be the only one to whom these principles apply.
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However, these worries are addressed at least to a certain extent by care theorists.
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In their explicit recognition of human beings as needing care, care theorists take a
stance on the type of person involved in society. For Tronto (2013: 146, emphasis in
original), ‘we are care receivers, all’, and I would add that we are also caregivers, all. The
acknowledgement of the centrality of care underscores both the importance of care
and the relationality of human beings.
In order to cash this out more thoroughly, I believe that it is worth examining
the thought experiment that Kittay (2009) introduces in her article ‘The ethics
of philosophizing: ideal theory and the exclusion of people with severe cognitive
disabilities’. Here, she proposes to imagine that ‘we begin our theorizing about an
ethic of care through a hypothetical…. We imagine a desert island with two human
beings, an adult, and at his (or her) feet, an infant…. This is our original position’
(Kittay, 2009: 127). For Kittay, the purpose of this thought experiment is to support
her argument for a naturalised ethics of care. Kittay stresses that this fiction leads to
an ideal theory of care ethics, which she is not willing to embrace, but it highlights
how the needs and concerns of each individual differ.Although she does not examine
the consequences of age here, the scenario affords an opportunity to reflect on the
impact of age on care needs and caregiving. I examine the scenario through the prism
of contingent and existential limitations.
The fiction not only leads to a reflection on possible arrangements, but also
provides a venue for exploring the type of individual who is embedded in these
social arrangements. I examine each in turn. What social arrangements would take
into consideration the care needs and the role of each individual? The limitations of
the child are different from those of the adult. For example, in her early years, the
child will need a caregiver. As the child grows and the adult ages, their existential
limitations will shift. In addition, their roles will also change: the child will become a
caregiver and the older adult will become a care receiver.7 It is certainly the case that
every citizen will be cared for in early childhood, and, in turn, will be providing some

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form of care. The centrality of care becomes evident: all individuals are immersed in
circles of care.8 Adequate social arrangements would remove contingent limitations
to meeting care needs and would acknowledge the respective and shifting existential
limitations of each individual. In order to arrive at these arrangements, the type of
individual embedded in care must also be determined.
If we look at the two people on the island, the adult, at least for a period of time,
could be portrayed as a Rawlsian subject but not the child. Instead, I propose to think
of both individuals in terms of deontological and teleological beings, as I discussed
previously. Positing the citizen as a deontological being requires the capacity to
self-legislation as essential. However, a teleological being, one who will have an idea
of the good but also one for whom the good has to be promoted, need not be an
adult with extensive cognitive capacities.9 At her core, the political subject is always a
teleological being and, at some point in time, she may become a deontological being.
It is in this sense that I understand citizens are fundamentally teleological beings and,
in addition, potentially deontological.
As Kittay argues, a care ethics approach is one that can address the care needs of all
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individuals, and she puts forward that a naturalised approach is better than a top-down
or idealised approach as it takes into consideration the contexts and particularities of
various caregiving situations. Before continuing, the differences between a top-down
and a naturalised approach must be clarified. For this, I return to Rawls.
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Rawls’s goal is to arrive as principles of justice to regulate political society. This

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is a top-down approach, also labelled ideal theory. It is ideal in the sense of being
worth striving for: a society that could perfectly enact principles of justice would
be a society free of all injustice. A naturalised theory is one that starts from actual
practices in specific situations and moves towards broader principles of practice. As
Alison Jaggar (2000: 464) explains in the case of a naturalised ethics, ‘attention to
real-life practices of moral inquiry is indispensable to determining which practices
best enable the production of reliable moral claims’. Jaggar (2000: 259) is careful to
clarify that a naturalised theory will rely on processes of idealisation; however, these
do not take place in a vacuum. In a naturalised theory as understood by Jaggar and
Kittay, results are to be critically assessed and revised if they turn out to be problematic.
However, even in a naturalised care ethics approach such as Kittay’s, the individual
who is implicitly discussed is the caregiver, that is, an adult. This is congruent with
one of the goals of care ethics, which is to make caregiving an activity of central
importance.Although I agree with Kittay’s proposal, a care ethics framework cannot be
thoroughly naturalised if it assumes even implicitly that the political subject is an adult.
It will remain partially idealised unless it also naturalises the concept of the citizen.
My proposal is to naturalise the citizen: the citizen is to be thought of not as this
idealised rational being, but as someone who needs care in infancy, may need care
later and has varying capacities throughout her life. Naturalising the citizen is to
accept age indeterminacy and acknowledge the reality of human variability.10 What
I am arguing for here is an explicit recognition of the citizen as an individual with
varying capacities and abilities over time; the citizen is an individual who changes,
who ages.11 Put differently, the citizen should be thought of as a political subject of
no precise age or of indeterminate age. By positing the citizen as someone who is
either very young, or an adult or someone who is very old, the abilities that such
an individual possesses could not be predetermined, nor would they be assumed
to be invariant. This explicitly recognises what Joel Michael Reynolds (2018: S35)

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identifies as ‘the transitions in ability that all organic life undergoes’.This is consistent
with conceptualising the citizen as a being who is teleological and at times both
deontological and teleological.
Conceptualising the citizen in this manner has some affinities with the manner
in which Martha Nussbaum conceptualises the political subject in her capabilities
framework. Her framework is teleological, in an Aristotelian sense, as it stresses
the importance of flourishing. The acknowledgement of age is explicit in the
capabilities approach as the capabilities are adjusted to the individuals. As Nussbaum
(2006: 160) writes in Frontiers of justice: ‘[th]us, in the design of the political
conception of the person out of which basic principles grow, we build in an
acknowledgement that we are needy temporal animal beings who begin as babies
and end, often, in other forms of dependency’. Although it may appear as if my
proposal could fit into a capabilities approach, there are significant differences.
First, Nussbaum does not specify the type of political subject in the same terms
as I have. That is, her approach centres on capabilities and adjusting these to
individuals, whereas mine focuses on the variability of individuals as they move
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through life and the need for care that is always present to some degree. More
importantly, the capabilities framework does not explicitly acknowledge care
activities as central to the public sphere, which is why a democratic ethics
of care approach is better suited to address the issues of unequal caregiving
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responsibilities.
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The strength of a care ethics framework is that it explicitly recognises the work
of care and the responsibilities for care as coming from the public sphere. As I have
previously discussed (Lanoix, 2015), care ethics brings an important corrective and
an explicit acknowledgement of what it means to live well together as Ricoeur
understood it. The way to attain the goal of living well together is not to focus on
the certain capacities that some individuals may possess. Rather, it means having
institutions and social arrangements that not only respect rights, but also provide for
meeting adequately the care needs of all citizens.12

Conclusion
Although the proposals to rethink citizenship are a step in the right direction, I have
argued that they do not go far enough. Obviously, those who are putting forward
either social or relational citizenship are thinking about citizenship as it relates to an
older population since dementia typically develops in older persons; these theorists are,
in fact, considering age in their discussions – if not explicitly, then at least implicitly.
If the model of relational citizenship is more inclusive and allows a space for the
agency of persons with dementia to be expressed in terms other than traditional
modes of active citizenship, such as voting, it does not guarantee that the care needs
of these citizens will be addressed. In order to make sure that these needs are not
ignored and are understood to be of relevance to the political sphere, I have called
for a re-conceptualisation of the political subject.
In a rather unorthodox move, I have applied the attribute of deontological and
teleological to the political subject. This allowed me to highlight how the primacy
of self-legislation, an essential competency of the Rawlsian political subject, signifies
that the Rawlsian citizen is a deontological being. She can only be an adult; her age
is fixed. By looking at the individual who has dependency considerations, I made

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the case that such an individual is a fundamentally teleological being, and when she
is actively involved in providing care, she is also a deontological being.
I am in agreement with care theorists that making a strong case for meeting care
needs fairly entails an explicit acknowledgement that all human beings need care.
Moreover, they will probably provide some form of care, broadly construed, at some
point in their lives. However, I have argued that the implication is that age cannot
be abstracted out of the concept of the citizen. My point is that care theorists must
pay heed to age and explicitly acknowledge that the citizen is not necessarily an
adult. Following Kittay’s use of naturalised, I have suggested that the concept of the
political subject must be naturalised: the citizen should be thought of as someone
who can be old, young or an adult, as well as a being with varying abilities. This has
two consequences. The first is that age becomes relevant to the political sphere. In
this way, the care needs of citizens have political currency. Second, it allows for a
richer concept of the political subject. In order to recognise the political subject as
someone with dependency considerations and to include those who are presumed
to be unable to participate in the political and social arenas, the citizen must be
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conceptualised as being of indeterminate age, which dovetails into conceiving the

citizen as teleological. This revised concept no longer fits neatly into an exclusively
deontological framework. A teleological perspective must be included; this is in
alignment with Ricoeur’s argument that a political theory should not rely solely
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on procedural justice. As I demonstrated, a care ethics framework does include a

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teleological dimension, although, as I explained, not in the full Aristotelian sense. My

proposal is consistent with the goal of both Kittay’s naturalised ethics and Tronto’s
democratic ethics of care, which is to recognise the political significance of care and
caring activities. A crucial step towards that aim is to re-conceptualise the citizen.

Notes
1 I take this term from the Kantian ethical tradition, where the rightness of an action

is determined by the action itself. The agent determining which action to take is a
human being who can self-legislate; that is, the agent articulates the proposed action
as a maxim that can become a universal law.
2 However, later in A theory of justice, Rawls (1971: 505) states that the two moral powers

need only be potential. It seems, then, that even if the capacity for moral personality is a
significant condition for being entitled to equal justice, Rawls admits that it may not be
actualised. By allowing for potentiality, Rawls could be interpreted as saying that even
if some individuals may not have sufficient moral powers to be considered the proper
subjects of justice in actuality, if they have such powers only potentially, they are not de
facto excluded from considerations of political justice. Sophia Wong (2007; 2010) takes
this potentiality seriously as it implies that individuals with severe cognitive deficits can
still be included as subjects of justice. I disagree with this reading as such individuals
are explicitly excluded elsewhere in Rawls’s writings (see, for example, Rawls’s
[1999: 259] ‘Kantian conception of equality’).There has been much discussion on this
topic and I direct the reader to the special issue of Metaphilosophy ([2009] 40[3/4]) on
moral philosophy and cognitive disability.
3 I agree with Tronto that care ethics is not a type of virtue ethics. Nevertheless, care

ethics does strive towards a society where needs can be met fairly. In this limited sense,
care ethics does strive towards a telos.
4 See note 2.

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5 The challenge is formidable as individuals with dementia are not taken to be credible
or capable of any type of participation. As Margaret Bruen (2013: 91) notes, ‘[m]ost
dementia research is based on observations and judgments by others … and using
people with dementia as informants in scientific research is still exceptional’. However,
Bruen (2013: 93) insists that the voices of these individuals should be heard if their
full humanity is to be recognised within a model of citizenship.
6  There is an interesting parallel here with Susan Wendell’s (1996) discussion of pain
and disability: that, ultimately, the social model of disability cannot address pain and
suffering as those are individually lived experiences.
7 There are many care theorists who have examined citizenship and dementia, and they

put forward that this framework has more potential as it explicitly acknowledges care
needs. For example, Tula Brannelly (2016) also argues that a care ethics framework is
more inclusive of people with dementia.
8 In an article in which they put forward caregiving as an issue of public health, Ronda

C. Talley and John E. Crews (2007) assert that caregiving is an issue that everyone
will face, regardless of the demographic categories in which they are situated.
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9  In several articles, Anita Silvers and Leslie Pickering Francis make the point that
individuals depend on each other to form ideas about their good. As they point out,
‘[f]or all of us and not just cognitively disabled people, conceptions of the good are
socially scripted and interactively developed’ (Silvers and Francis, 2009: 485). This
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implies that all individuals can strive to find some version of the good for themselves
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and those with whom they are connected.

10 Claire Colebrook’s (2015: 167) suggestion is to reconfigure rights as pragmatic rights,

instead of opposing rights/personhood to obligations/life. Rights are no longer trumps,

but emphasise a relationship. Although I cannot develop this here, I believe that this is
consistent with recasting the notion of the citizen.
11 Writing in the context of corporeal interdependence, Rosalyn Diprose (2013: 191)

acknowledges that human beings are not self-contained and are open to transformation
by the world in which they live. I bring attention to Diprose’s statement as it highlights
the transformative potential of human beings. If there is some room for potentiality in
liberalism, it is limited as it frames the transformation of the citizen and her potential
from the perspective of an adult that enacts a life plan.
12 It is in this sense that the good of society can be said to be a thinner version of the

social good.A thick version might require a particular view on life or religion; however,
a thin version simply seeks living well together.

Funding
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada, ‘Imagining Age Friendly “Communities within Communities”: International
Promising Practices’, PG 895-2018-1013, Director Dr Tamara Daly (see: https://imagine-
aging.ca/).

Acknowledgements
I thank the editors of this issue for their dedication, generosity, encouragement and
perceptive comments on earlier drafts. In addition, I am indebted to the two anonymous
reviewers who asked probing questions, made insightful observations and provided helpful
suggestions. For all their work, I am most grateful.

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 Monique Lanoix

Conflict of interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

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